“And the Lord said unto Moses, Go unto the people, and sanctify them to day and to morrow, and let them wash their clothes, and be ready against the third day: for the third day the Lord will come down in the sight of all the people unto Mount Sinai” (Exodus 19:9-10)
In the beginning, God created man in His image and likeness. Because God is a Spirit and His image / likeness is Holy, so was Adam also made in the holiness of God. He possessed power and authority as god in the earth, given dominion over every living creature that existed. The result of Adam’s sin was his separation from the presence and power of God, and the lost of his identity as a son of God.
But despite Adam’s fall, God never gave up on His attempts to redeem man back unto Himself, providing a covenant filled with ordinances for the purification and sanctification of bulls, goats, and other bloody offerings to cover man’s sinful nature. These proved to be, at best, temporary remedies for what ailed man, for it was not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sin (Hebrews 10:4).
“For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect” (Hebrews 10:1)
The provisions of this covenant could never bring us to the place of redemption required to re-make us into the image of God. It was made of necessity that Jesus would come in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh (Romans 8:3). Hence we have the “born again” concept espoused by Christ where a man could actually be transformed by the renewing of His mind by the power of God’s Holy Spirit dwelling inside.
Many have thought that to be “sanctified” meant to be a part of a church that spoke with tongues, danced in the Spirit to music provided by guitars, organs, and drums. But that’s only an outward demonstration of one’s appreciation to God for the Christ sacrifice, for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and the outpouring of the Spirit of God in the earth gave us another opportunity to retain our identity as sons of God. But to be sanctified means to:
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To consecrate, dedicate, hallow, be holy, or separate
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To honor or treat as something as sacred
“What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)
It is the will of God that we separate ourselves from anything that sucks the life of God from us, anything that causes weakness to prevail in our lives. God has given us power over the power of the enemy, but our power is useless if we continue in sin. We must recognize just how much God hates sin, and once we do, then we’ll take His word more seriously.
Jesus Christ prayed that we would be sanctified through the word that He has spoken unto us (John 17:17). The apostle Paul admonished us in Romans 12:1 to present our bodies a “living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God”. The word also teaches us to “sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy: for I am the Lord your God. And ye shall keep my statutes, and do them: I am the Lord which sanctify you” (Leviticus 20:7-8).
“Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:1)
